AutoGen.
Microsoft's multi-agent framework — Magentic-One in production.
What it is.
Microsoft Research's multi-agent framework. AutoGen 0.4 brought async, distributed agents and the Magentic-One reference topology — a coordinator that orchestrates specialist agents. Azure AI Foundry hosts the production runtime; the framework itself remains open-source MIT.
Where it fits.
Azure-aligned enterprises that want a first-party agent framework. The Magentic-One pattern is the most studied multi-agent topology in the literature, which makes it the safe choice for teams that want to defend their architecture to a board.
- Strongest research lineage in the multi-agent category
- Azure-native production path
- Permissive MIT licence
- Smaller community than LangChain
- Azure pull may not suit non-Microsoft estates
Frequently asked.
What is Magentic-One?
AutoGen's reference multi-agent topology. A coordinator agent orchestrates specialist agents for web, files, terminal, and coding. The pattern most production AutoGen deployments adopt verbatim.
Is AutoGen tied to Azure?
The framework is not. The hosted production runtime — Azure AI Foundry — is. Self-hosted deployment works on any cloud or on-prem.
How active is AutoGen development?
Microsoft Research ships major releases roughly quarterly. The community-led packages around AutoGen ship faster.
